Start a real estate photography business

What this step produces: a written table of ten listing agents — their current turnaround, what they would change, and whether 24-hour delivery would make them switch. The trap is flattery: agents say “sounds great” to be polite, so the only answers that count are the ones you log during the call, in the agent’s own words.

Build the list of ten. Start with agents you already know, and end every call by asking for one referral to a colleague who lists 10 or more homes a year. Fill the gaps from your city’s top producers on Zillow or Realtor.com, sorted by recent listings rather than total sales — the agents who shoot a listing every week feel the turnaround pain most.

Run the ten calls with three questions, in order:

1. “How long does your current photographer take, from shoot to delivered gallery?”
2. “What would you change about how your listing photos are handled today?”
3. “If a photographer delivered the gallery within 24 hours, every time — would you switch, and what is that worth to you?”

Log every answer the same day in a table: agent, brokerage, listings per year, current turnaround, what they would change, would switch (yes/no), notes. Then apply the kill rule: count the “would switch” column. Fewer than three — stop before spending a dollar.